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underneath the anger: complexity

The Washington Post today has published an interesting article Inside AIG–FP, Feeling the Public’s Wrath on employees of the despised AIG division that was one of the centers of the entire economic meltdown.

This smart article reveals the complexity underneath all the anger. such as this detail:“The handful of souls who championed the firm’s now-infamous credit-default swaps are, by nearly every account, long since departed. Those left behind to clean up the mess, the majority of whom never lost a dime for AIG, now feel they have been sold out by their Congress and their president.”So the ones who really deserve our wrath… where are they? will we ever be able to hold them accountable… or at least the executives and managers who directed them?

The article also points out another obvious detail:“It would be impractical at best, dangerous at worst, to get rid of everyone at Financial Products, according to AIG officials. If everyone leaves, Pasciucco said, ‘you don’t have people that really, truly understand the book [of business]. We’re still big enough that that matters.’If they did walk out the door, who would volunteer to work at the Chernobyl of the financial world?”

Before he waded into the circus on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, Liddy e-mailed a letter to the employees of Financial Products, asking them to “step up and do the right thing.” He asked that anyone who received more than $100,000 in retention payments return at least 50 percent.

“The Financial Products staff met twice Wednesday inside one of the firm’s large, glass-walled conference rooms to discuss the boss’s letter. Numerous employees indicated that they would be willing to return the money, but most wanted nothing more to do with the firm. It was a preview of the possible exodus to come, one that concerns Liddy himself.”

“My fear is that the damage is done,” he told a congressional subcommittee. “That they will return [the money], but that they will return it with their resignations.”

“There is little doubt within Financial Products that he’s right about that.”

“‘Nobody is going to give it back and then stay,’ said one of the firm’s employees. ‘If they give back the money, then they will walk.'”

Given that these employees are not the ones who set up this mess, why would they take the heat for someone else’s epic disaster?

Clearly, AIG is beyond repair. The name is synonymous with corruption and greed. Who in their right mind would want to do business with them now?

The company should be dismantled, assets sold off and it’s corrupt managers and executives who quit were fired or fled, where ever they are—should be held accountable for their crimes.

Fluxionesque

This is the blog of Mark Christopher Harvey.
Topics are primarily personal art
projects and work in progress with some deviations into other peoples
artwork, expanded content from the Fluxion art journal, and occasionally topics on art & culture.